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Friday, January 25, 2013

I've been a
freelance editor for about a year now. I work for a publishing company, and I
work for other authors who hire me to edit their manuscripts. I
love it. I’ve been on the other side. I’ve been the author waiting for the
editor to finish with a book, and it’s been an honor—and a lot of fun—to get to
be that editor for other authors.

But what,
exactly, does an editor do and why does an author need one? I mean, the author
already edited the book fifty bisquillion times, so it should be fine, right?

Welllll…maybe. But
I’m going to venture a guess that 99.999999% of the time, the author is so
close to the manuscript and has seen it so many times that obvious things will
be missed--and not-so-obvious things will go unnoticed.

As for what an
editor does—or, at least, what I do
as an editor:

1. An editor has to
learn the story inside and out and pay attention to every single detail on every
single page. Her brain has to be set to hyper-hyper-hyper-aware mode, so
that she can remember little details that could come back a hundred pages
later. Keep in mind that she might not get to that hundredth page for a week,
so she has to remember it all that time. She has to know the details so that if
they’re contradicted, she can fix this or mention it to the author.

2. An editor has
to know the characters backwards and forwards so that if something happens and
it seems out of character, she can mention it and try to help the author figure
out how to fix it. She has to know the story backwards and forwards so she can spot plot holes and offer suggestion to the author on how to fix them.

3. An editor has
to get the flow of the story and learn the author’s style so that she can suggest
ways to make certain sentences flow more smoothly while not disturbing
the author’s voice. She has to pay attention to what words/phrases the author uses so
she knows if the author is particularly fond of a particular word or phrase.
Then she works with the author on cutting out some of those words or phrases so they don’t
become annoying.

4. And in
addition to all of that, an editor has to know the rules of grammar—and if she
doesn’t know, she needs to be willing to find the answers. Her best tools are
Google, Merriam-Webster dictionary/thesaurus, and other editors who might know
the answer. She has to know where commas go, what adjective phrases need
hyphens, the importance and correct use of past perfect tense, the importance and correct use of all tenses, the differences between all
sorts of homophones, the proper uses of apostrophes, whether to use
who/that/which, and a million other little grammatical details.

5. A good editor
is invisible—she helps the author
tweak and clean up and fix the book, but when a reader is going through the
book, that reader should never see how much work was done to the manuscript.

6. And the editor
is only human—she catches everything she can, but she also knows that since she
has started editing, she has not yet read a published book that didn’t have some
mistakes—even NYT bestsellers. Because with everything
the editor does on the manuscript, as much as she strives for perfection,
there might be something she misses. She does the absolute best she can.

Editor Laura Fact: On average, it takes me about two weeks
to edit an 80,000 – 100,000 word manuscript—sometimes a little less, sometimes
more. That’s just the first round. Then I send it back to the author for
revisions, and then I have one last look at it. The second look typically takes a few hours, but can sometimes take a day or two.

Now, I’d like to
give you a little glimpse of what the editing process is sometimes like for me. In some ways, it's like the stages of writing a book--the ups and downs and emotional highs and emotional exhaustion. I present to you Laura's Stages of Editing:

Now, in the end,
it is always, always, always the
author’s book. I can make suggestions and recommendations until I’m blue in the
face. It doesn’t mean the author is always going to take the suggestions. And
that’s their choice.

But an editor is
not trying to stomp on the author’s thoughts or ideas or characters—well, not
the editors I know, anyway.

The author is
attached to their writing. They’ve created the world and written the words and poured sweat and tears and
countless hours into it. It’s normal to feel protective of it.

The editor is not
attached like that. The editor sees the story, the words, the phrases, the
grammar, the flow, the style…and does her best to help the author make it all
shine.

Of course, there
are all sorts of different personalities, too—maybe one editor and author won’t
really click, but another one will. So finding
an editor who works well with you is also important. Tristi Pinkston did a
great blog post about that here: Finding a Good Editor

*Have you ever
worked with an editor? Was it a good experience? Do you feel that editors are
necessary for your book?

And now, if you’ll
excuse me, I have about 20,000 words left in a client edit to finish by the end
of tomorrow. ;)

My publisher's editor is really good to work with and she always makes smart suggestions. Fortunately I have three critique partners and two test readers who catch a lot of the mistakes and major issues before I send it to my publisher. Otherwise I'd be accused of torturing the poor lady.

Thank you for giving insight! I sorta/kinda thought an editor was pointless until I actually had one, and she found so many things that I'd missed - SOO many. Now the thought of not having an editor sends me into a panic. I think a good editor can make so much difference, and it sounds like you are doing a fantastic job! Way to go!

Thanks for showing this from 'the other side'. :) You've definitely raised my already high respect. My 1st editor experience wasn't great - simply a bad match. Her style was too different from my own. But I loved my last one! Yep, she marked it red, red, and more red... but her suggestions were wonderful.

Thank you so much for the look into how this works! I loved the graphics. And I'm so happy to see you still freelance, because I was thinking about giving self publishing a try, just once, to see what it's like, and you were the exact editor I wanted to ask about prices. So...I might be bugging you in a couple months. If I actually finish the story!! Thanks again for listing the steps of the process.